LA Progressive: August 8 to 15, 2010 — Articles

Economic “Recovery?” Not for You and Me. The essential hidden fact of economics in 21st century America: What we have is exactly what the tiny economic elite, the one or two percent of richest Americans, wants us to have. -Jim Fuller

Chamber Of Commerce Speaks Up on Immigration. Labor and business appear to agree on one thing: on its own, the $600 million border bill won’t solve any of these issues and will do little to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. -Andrea Nill

America’s Biggest Jobs Program: The U.S. Military. Having a giant undercover military jobs program is an insane way to keep Americans employed. It creates jobs we don’t need but we keep anyway because there’s no honest alternative. –Robert Reich

‘No Drama Obama’ Needs a Strong Second Act. The Obama administration is a welcome change from the Bush–Cheney years. However, much of what President Obama is doing appears to be an extension of Bush–Cheney values. –Walter M. Basch

Checks and Balances, Part II. Here I reveal how a coalition of sub-populations cutting in an entirely different direction (connecting selected people with powerful segments of government) can become destabilizing — possibly even undemocratic (dare I say dictatorial?). –Ron Wolff

President John McCain’s First 18 Months in Office. President McCain has urged that the United Nations move its headquarters out of the U.S., and he has proposed that the U.S. leave the UN, which he calls “useless and corrupt”. He also has refused to meet with most foreign leaders in the White House, or to travel abroad, except for heavily guarded and secret trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. –Ted Vaill

Watch “Deficit Hawks” Rush to Defend Pentagon Bloat. The Republican Party and Democratic so-called “deficit hawks” attack any proposed defense cuts as “job killers.” Yet this alliance refused to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, and have backed tax and spending policies that have cost the nation millions of jobs in recent years. –Randy Shaw:

Saving the Earth for Our Grandchildren. Until recently, nobody knew that the unprecedented wealth of American society carried extreme dangers for our own future. Our modern lifestyles of consumption are slowly killing the planet. -Steve Hochstadt

Mortgage Foreclosures, Housing, and the Current Economic Crisis. So far, here in the U.S., over 4 million homes have been foreclosed on since mid-2006. Because consumer spending drops drastically whenever housing values decline, the entire U.S. economy has been in a tail-spin throughout this period. Over 10 million jobs have been totally eliminated due to a dramatic drop in consumer sales and the resultant decline in production.

Duke Cunningham, Tom Delay, and Jack Abramoff

Where’s the Oil? Here, There, and Everywhere. The world faces the difficult challenge of understanding exactly what has happened to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico in the uncertainty of the aftermath of the April 20 explosion of the BP Macondo wellhead. -Georgianne Nienaber

GOP: Bring Back ‘Corruption of Blood’. Now, to drum up hysteria about this alleged rash of pregnant Mexican border hoppers, the GOP’s idea is to change the Constitution so that being without papers is treated more harshly than treason. -Tina Dupuy

What to Do About the Wars. Most analysts believe that the U.S. government will renegotiate the status of forces agreement with any new Iraqi government—making the heroic assumption that there is a new Iraqi government by next year—to leave some forces permanently in that country. -Ivan Eland

The Jobs Emergency. We need a response proportional to the crisis. Obama, Pelosi, and Reed should summon Congress back to Washington for action on the jobs emergency. -Robert Reich

The Maxine Waters Investigation: What Is Iran Doing in This Picture? Fox News wasted no time exploiting the WikiLeaks documents to further vilify Iran, pointing out that the documents indicate the U.S. belief that Iran is arming the Taliban insurgency. This adds another layer to Fox’s steady stream of propaganda that has flowed over the years advocating for an attack on the country, and stands as a reason why some believe the leak was staged. But what does this have to do with Rep. Maxine Waters and the House Ethics Committee? -Katherine Smith

The Net Neutrality Spat Explained. At stake is the principle of net neutrality — the idea that Internet service providers must treat all traffic equally, and not privilege certain content by giving it more, or less, bandwidth — a principle that the FCC has been more aggressive about implementing under the Obama administration. -Marian Wang

Fly Away, Mockingbird. As the armies of tolerance celebrate To Kill a Mockingbird–it’s the 50 anniversary this month—one is put in mind of a maxim by W.H. Auden: “You do not read a book,” Auden said. “A book reads you.” -John Summers

Versus China, We’re Not Even in the Right Game. We are so screwed. We simply don’t get it in the USA and EU. After three weeks spent travelling around the globe, I see that the Chinese eat our lunch while we busy ourselves in silly ideological Left vs. Right fights over control of Washington, Westminster, and Brussels. -Denis Campbell

We’re Even Deeper in the Hole. An extraordinary number of Americans are still hurting. It’s more important than ever for the US government to step in with a larger stimulus that puts more people to work and tax cuts for people who will spend them. -Robert Reich:

Voices from the Wetlands, In “Voices from the Wetlands,” veteran reporter Georgianne Nienaber gives a first-hand account of the damage wrecked by the BP oil well disaster on the Louisiana Delta and on the people whose families have lived there for centuries.

Gay Marriage: The Tide Is Turning. Although nobody believes that homophobia has disappeared, polls show that public support for gay rights – including marriage – has increased dramatically in the past decade, especially in the last few years. -Peter Dreier

Fast 4 Freedom. AB900 was a huge victory for the prison-industrial complex. “People are making a profit out of putting people in cages,” said Geri Silva. -Diane Lefer

Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Herbert Hoover. Both Greenspan and Rubin are deficit hawks. So was Herbert Hoover and so was Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. And look what Hoover and Mellon got us into. When we least need him, Hoover is being exhumed. -Robert Reich

University of Phoenix: Right Out of David Mamet. Any institution that calls itself a “university” yet tells its enrollment officers to “burrow” down deep into the “pain” of its students with the aim of hooking them into government-subsidized debt to rake in the profits not only doesn’t deserve to be accredited, but should be barred from having any access to federal student aid programs. -Joseph Palermo

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Margo McCall: There’s increasing evidence that adopting a plant-based diet is better for human health, the planet, and of course for the more than 9 billion animals that are killed for consumption each year in the U.S alone.